Dr. Augustine Sokolovski
I. Grace as Communication
Grace is communication. This is difficult to grasp. We come to understand it through the example of the saints, their relationships, and their community. It becomes particularly clear when we study the saints attentively, examining their lives with an almost unwavering gaze.
II. Comparative Patristics: Saints and Their Spiritual Connections
Comparative patristics is one of those fields of inquiry that I find especially fascinating. Here, however, the term reflects my own way of describing a particular scholarly interest rather than the universally accepted name of an independent academic discipline. Traditional patristics studies the lives, writings, and theology of the Church Fathers, while a comparative approach makes it possible to examine them in relation to one another.
It is extraordinarily interesting to trace the interweaving of the saints’ lives, the coincidence of significant dates, their social circles, and their spiritual connections. After all, we often imagine the saints as existing in a kind of solitude, as though each had lived independently of the others. Yet the saints were by no means alone. Indeed, the more closely we examine their lives, the more clearly we see that they stayed together like flocks of birds, supported one another, and formed remarkable spiritual communities.
Such an approach requires us to compare not only the saints’ personalities, ways of thinking, and historical periods, but also their friendships, intellectual circles, and the ways in which subsequent generations perceived and judged them. Jerome and Augustine provide a telling example: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/1469–1536) clearly preferred Jerome, whereas Martin Luther (1483–1546) held Augustine in particularly high esteem. Such differences reveal how differently the legacy of the Church Fathers was received in later periods.
This is precisely why comparisons between Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose – these three alone – are so fascinating. Yet Ambrose’s network of spiritual relationships extended beyond the names that most readily come to mind when we speak of the Church Fathers. He also had other contemporaries, friends, and interlocutors whose lives were closely intertwined with his own. One of them was Saint Bassianus of Lodi.
III. Saint Bassianus and Ambrose: Interwoven Lives
Anyone who has visited Milan may have noticed the suburban railway station at Lodi, whose name inevitably brings the Polish city of Łódź to mind. Yet the name points to more than a geographical landmark: Lodi is a city inseparably linked to Saint Bassianus, its patron saint.
Saint Bassianus was a contemporary of Ambrose, his friend, interlocutor, and, in a sense, companion along the journey of life. Their biographies intersect in remarkable ways: both passed through certain stages of secular public life before dedicating themselves to Christ.
Unlike Augustine and Jerome, whose recollections seem to draw them back to the “calls of the past” – those very “Night Calls” from Joe Cocker’s song of the same title – the biographies of Bassianus and Ambrose appear to lack the dramatic tension of repentance and conversion. Ambrose ordained Bassianus as a bishop, and Bassianus later performed Ambrose’s funeral rites. There is something profoundly and distinctively Christian, something fraternal, in this bond between them.
What a remarkable thing that bishops in antiquity did not transfer from one episcopal see to another in the way that became possible in later centuries! It is difficult to imagine Augustine serving first as bishop of Hippo, then of Carthage, and finally, say, of Rome. For an episcopal see was not merely a place of ministry; it was also a space of spiritual responsibility, historical memory, and rootedness in the life of a particular community. “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” (Matthew 24:28). Would Augustine’s genius have emerged in the same way without prolonged engagement with the episcopal see, Tradition, and the local Church of Hippo in Roman North Africa – that concrete localization of the Body of Christ?
In this respect, the story of Bassianus is especially revealing. His connection with Ambrose does not dissolve into the abstractions of Church history but takes on concrete form: it has names, events, mutual obligations, and, ultimately, a city in which the memory of this bond continues to live.
IV. Lodi: A City Permeated by the Presence of a Saint
A journey to Lodi leaves a profound impression. The entire city seems permeated by the presence of its saint: images of him can be found everywhere, while his relics, preserved in their entirety, rest in the cathedral.
What is particularly memorable is the way they are arranged there: a liturgical book and the Eucharistic vessels are placed nearby. The entire space – the altar where the saint rests – creates the impression that he might rise at any moment to celebrate the Divine Liturgy once again. It is one of those memories that remain with a person forever.
V. The Theology of a City
Perhaps this is precisely how the theology of a city reveals itself: through the relationship between place and person, memory and presence, historical event and continuing ecclesial life. A saint remains more than a name in the calendar or a figure from the distant past. His life becomes woven into the destiny of the city, and the city itself becomes a visible testimony to his presence.
This helps us understand why the study of the saints requires attention not only to their writings and theological ideas, but also to their friendships, encounters, mutual service, and the places where all these relationships have left their mark.
Grace is communication. And perhaps Lodi allows us to see this with particular clarity: the communion of saints does not end with their earthly lives. It continues in the memory of the Church, in the liturgy, in sacred places, and in the very fabric of the city that preserves the name of its patron saint.